... quick reads on the go

... quick reads on the go

Africa

In the time that all animals still lived together, there once lived a spider called Ananse. He lived in a village with his relatives and all kinds of other animals: hyena, porcupine, squirrel, guineafowl, the chameleon, the warthog and many, many more. …

How Frog came to be King of Rivers and Marshes There was a time when animals and people lived on the earth harmoniously side by side. Each respected the other, and they went out of their way to be friendly and useful to each other. The elephant …

The grass shrivelled up and turned a pale grey. Rivers and pools dried up. All day long animals scurried around looking for food and finding nothing. Mr Tortoise was getting desperate. Every day he woke up to the sound of his wife and children crying. …

How the tortoise got its scars (second version) Once upon a time there was a wedding in the sky. The bride and groom invited all the animals in the whole land. Those who had wings and could fly obviously would have no problem attending but those …

Monkey lived on the branches of an old mangrove tree, right on the spot where the land ends and the sea begins. He liked living here. There were lots of other animals to talk to and play with, most of them much smaller than he was, which he particularl …

Once upon a time there lived a hunter called Ajakasi. Many hunters lived in his village. Some hunters used guns, some used bows and arrows, others used sticks and cutlasses to do their hunting. Ajakasi went on a hunting expedition early one morning. He …

The hare and the tortoise This version of the old story, which we all know in the version made famous by Aesop, was told to me in London by Zarah, a refugee from Somalia. Hare was a very vain creature. He was always going around putting o …

Once upon a time there was a chief in a village near the bush. This man had many sons, and one of them was the best hunter in the whole land. Whenever he went out hunting, he always managed to bring back much more meat than any of the other hunters in …

Once upon a time there was a town where all the people were exceedingly lazy. They didn’t like to do any kind of work at all! They didn’t clean up their yards, they didn’t keep their streets clean, and they couldn’t be bothered to weed their vegetable …

Once upon a time there lived a very great and honourable chief called Gbeyor. He had a daughter called Gbeofia, meaning queen of beauty. Gbeyor had given this name to his daughter because she was the most beautiful girl in the whole village. When she h …

Once upon a time there lived a woman whose name was Aftermath. She had one daughter, whose name was Akuvi. Her husband had died when the girl was still very young. As Akuvi grew up she began to rebel against her mother’s authority. If Aftermath asked h …

Long ago a man called Kofi Amero lived in a village called Amero Kopfhi. The village was named after him because in those days he was the wealthiest man in the whole area. Kofi Amero was a very strict man, but he wasn’t fair, no, he was nasty and selfi …

Once upon a time there lived a woman who couldn’t have children. Because of that all her husbands kept leaving her. One day she was feeling so sad, miserable and lonely that she decided to go and see a witch doctor, for him to help her have a baby. The …

Once upon a time a hyena was out foraging in the bush. It was a fine sunny day and he was looking forward to catching some morsels to eat. But as he was sniffing around, he fell into a hidden trap set by a hunter. He found himself at the bottom of a ho …

Mr Spider, who is popularly known as Ananse, is renowned to be a man of tricks. Have you ever asked yourself why he is bald? This is the story of how this came about. One afternoon, after Mr spider had enjoyed his lunch, he sat down in his yard to rela …

Once upon a time, in the distant past, there was a great war between the animals who live in the sky and those that live on the ground. Nobody now remembers how the war started or what it was about, but it was a terrible time. Many animals on both sides were wounded or killed, and eventually somebody said that if they carried on like this, there would be no animals left on the earth. So some of the sky animals and some of the ground animals had a meeting, and as nobody could recall what they were fighting each other for, it was agreed that a truce should be called, and peace declared.

A very long time ago, before man came along to upset the natural balance, all animals lived together peacefully. But in those days, none of the animals had heads of their own, except the elephant, who was the King of the animals. He had a large collection of heads in all shapes and sizes, which he kept stored in a large cave. Every time an animal wished to leave the village compound to go out into the field or the bush, he would go to the elephant first and ask to borrow a head.